Title: laptop gfx card for opencl : GTX 480M or ATI HD5870 ? (dual card or not ?) Post by: ker2x on October 29, 2010, 09:56:52 AM Friendly greetings !
I'm willing to buy a (big (expensive)) laptop for OpenCL programming, from : http://www.clevo.com.tw/ I'm used to be NVidia only, but the ATI 5870 seems to be very, very, very powerfull (No cuda, optix, physX, ... but i never took time to use it thoses NVidia only technology anyway). It's much cheaper too. i can have (crossfire) 2xHD4870 for cheaper than a single 480M. (yes, clevo build some insane laptop with 2 gfx card). I don't know ATI cards (and ATI Stream) well enough to choose between both solution. Can you help please ? Thank you :) Title: Re: laptop gfx card for opencl : GTX 480M or ATI HD5870 ? (dual card or not ?) Post by: hobold on October 29, 2010, 11:37:22 AM If the primary purpose is GPGPU programming, then IMHO a laptop is not a good choice. For one, you cannot upgrade GPUs in a laptop. And secondly, mobile GPUs are much more power constrained than their desktop counterparts. You are allowed to pay for a top of the line GPU, but you can't really run it at full speed. Up to 250 Watts of power are converted into heat ... in the confined space of a laptop ... not for long.
Nvidia and AMD have been following opposite hardware design philosophies. Nvidia spends quite a bit of effort to utilize the computational units as efficiently as possible, while AMD just packs more brute force. Theoretically, the 5870 has roughly double the peak computational performance of a 480. In practice it's a wash: comparable net performance across a wide range of graphics and GPGPU benchmarks, comparable number of transistors, and only slight power consumption advantages for AMD. You can't really go wrong with either. Especially if you are not locked into Nvidia's exclusive CUDA infrastructure. Title: Re: laptop gfx card for opencl : GTX 480M or ATI HD5870 ? (dual card or not ?) Post by: lycium on October 29, 2010, 01:00:08 PM Gotta agree with hobold (greetz fellow Ompf'er!), a laptop is fundamentally unsuited to high performance computing applications.
For GPU programming I'd say the Fermi architecture has a decisive edge over the 5xxx / 6xxx chip series from AMD, however be aware that double precision throughput is crippled in GeForce cards (cf the Tesla range) if that matters to you. Title: Re: laptop gfx card for opencl : GTX 480M or ATI HD5870 ? (dual card or not ?) Post by: cbuchner1 on October 29, 2010, 02:07:15 PM Friendly greetings ! I'm willing to buy a (big (expensive)) laptop for OpenCL programming, from : http://www.clevo.com.tw/ Using a Clevo with GTX 295M graphics chip here at work equipped with a Core i7 for high performance mobile radio simulation. The GPU has 128 shader cores and is essentially a G92M chip (roughtly comparable to nVidia 8800GT). After months of testing and frustration we've finally got this platform working. On Linux there were several problems (each one being a potential showstopper). Only recent nVidia drivers starting at 256.19 would ever clock the GPU to its nominal speed. Previous versions were having an ACPI related problem and always used a very low GPU clock rate (400MHz). This problem lingered for over a year until nVidia finally fixed it! Luckily we bought the hardware only about 1 month before the fix was made available. The BIOS on this graphics module has trouble detecting externally connected monitors on the analog VGA output. It always switches off the internal LCD panel and misdetects the external monitor that is connected. We had to apply some nasty overrides in the video driver to get a correct image. Too old Linux kernels won't detect the power management features on the Core i7 properly, so Turbo Boost would not function. Just run a recent distribution (the patch was submitted to the Linux kernel around January 2010) or apply a kernel patch manually. Oh and any Linux support with the vendor (Clevo or our local distributor MySN) is entirely non existent, it seems. I cannot comment on Windows, as we've never tried to install Windows on this machine. Meanwhile you can get GTX 470M/480M from Clevo, but not in the smallest form factor PCs they sell (the 15 inch platform we have here, based on the Clevo W860CU barebones platform). The GTX 460M with its 192 shaders seems to be available for the 15 inch models now. Instead I'd recommend getting a low cost PC equipped with a 32 or 48 shader GPU for development on the road, and a good desktop PC with plenty of shaders for production runs, unless you absolutely require the high performance moblity. And you get two PCs for the price of one Clevo ;) I hope this helps choosing right. Title: Re: laptop gfx card for opencl : GTX 480M or ATI HD5870 ? (dual card or not ?) Post by: hobold on October 29, 2010, 06:27:13 PM (greetz fellow Ompf'er!) Yes, that's indeed me over there, too. I have nothing of interest to contribute there. But maybe my raytracer number N + 1 (currently in slow production) might progress far enough that it will be worth talking about. Someday. :)Back to topic. I should probably add that I am currently in the AMD/ATI camp, and that I expect Nvidia to change beyond recognition over the next two years. Separate graphics cards will become a rarity when both Intel and AMD integrate on die GPUs with their upcoming next CPU generation. Unfortunately, OpenCL is not yet ready to take over if CUDA were to be dragged down by an agonizing Nvidia. Unpredictable times ahead, and rumours of Nvidia's death could end up being wildly exaggerated. I am happy that I don't have to make hard decisions about basing a commercial product on GPGPU codes. For a hobbyist, though, both OpenCL(AMD) and CUDA(Nvidia) are equally good or bad. Lycium is probably right that Nvidia has an edge for floating point number crunching. On the other hand, Fermi is a bit handicapped with regards to atomic operations (i.e. synchronization primitives). I find it very hard to predict which hardware is going to do better for a specific algorithm. GeForces and Radeons are somewhat complementary in their specific strengths and weaknesses. It's all the more surprising that neither is consistently ahead of the other. Title: Re: laptop gfx card for opencl : GTX 480M or ATI HD5870 ? (dual card or not ?) Post by: ker2x on October 29, 2010, 09:19:30 PM Thank you for your comments :)
Why a laptop : - Yes, i want some kind of mobility (home<->work, nothing more). - it's hard to upgrade my desktop (with a 8800GTX) - i noticed that i mostly develop on my tiny Eeepc 12" (with a ion2 gpu) I choosen the 18" laptop with Dual HD5870 (poweeer). The autonomy will be very bad (150W just for the 2 GPU) but it's not a problem. It will be large and heavy, but when i really want to be mobile i use my Eeepc :) Thank you again Title: Re: laptop gfx card for opencl : GTX 480M or ATI HD5870 ? (dual card or not ?) Post by: ker2x on December 07, 2010, 05:29:26 PM i finally ordered my laptop today.
it will be a 15" with 460M 1.5GB. I will use it at work for some stuff that require high cpu/memory. That's why i took a smaller card, and a bigger cpu + 8GB of ram. thank you for your advices, the choice was very hard :angry: Title: Re: laptop gfx card for opencl : GTX 480M or ATI HD5870 ? (dual card or not ?) Post by: ker2x on December 11, 2010, 11:16:14 AM received !
As a side note, the nvidia sdk for linux is certified for some version of distro. it's certified for ubuntu 10.04, but it work without any problem on 10.10 :angel1: Title: Re: laptop gfx card for opencl : GTX 480M or ATI HD5870 ? (dual card or not ?) Post by: ker2x on December 11, 2010, 01:33:49 PM using the latest stable driver and sdk (as far as i know) on ubuntu 10.10 with a GTX460M
Code: ./deviceQuery Starting... Code: ./bandwidthTest Starting... Code: oclDeviceQuery.exe Starting... Code: ./oclBandwidthTest Starting... Title: Re: laptop gfx card for opencl : GTX 480M or ATI HD5870 ? (dual card or not ?) Post by: ker2x on January 10, 2011, 11:24:21 AM My 8800GTX died this weekend. i bought a 470 an hour ago (before going @work), i'll test this evening (unless i have to buy a new PSU too :angry: ) |